On October 8 we attended the CEO Meeting hosted by the Club de Innovación, a meeting that brought together managers and executives of the main companies and organizations of Chile, to inspire, learn and share experiences around corporate venturing and open innovation. 

This Hub fosters corporate innovaton since 2014 in Chile, and for tis year's CEO Meeting theme they chose the challenges and opportunities that open innovation and corporate venturing produces, through the synergy between large companies and startups, where the exploration of capacities, technological developments and knowledge existing in the ecosystem, and mutual and constant collaboration, are part of the new way to build and strengthen businesses.

The General Manager of Club de Innovación, Sebastián Pilasi, said that “it is currently very difficult for a medium-sized and especially large company to move on its own with the speed demanded by the market, needing help to achieve it. That support must be given by the ecosystem, for which corporate venturing becomes a key element for large companies to generate significant productivity and innovation leaps. ”

For that to happen, he adds, there are two factors; “First, the company has to be willing to open the doors of the organization, whether to incorporate new talents, summon the ecosystem to solve a challenge together, co-create or take part in a startup. That is the main challenge, generating trust and cultural change in organizations to work together with professionals, universities and startups outside the company. Change mindsetting and build social capital, ”he explained.

He also added, “the second great challenge is that the company, once the trust base is achieved, generates the special conditions so that said product, service in development or new company, does not fall into a bureaucratic process or a rigid process typical of the organization, since if so, most likely it will end up suffocating it. ”

To present real cases, including successful strategies as well as the main obstacles of incorporating this model in corporate innovation, Club de Innovación's CEO Meeting had the participation of national and international guests who shared their experiences leading projects in Nisum, Walmart Chile, Digevo and Unilever.

From the US, our CEO and founder Imtiaz Mohammady, shared his journey into corporate venture, ensuring that “we work in a highly saturated market, therefore evolution and innovation are not an option… with a necessary change! Innovation is the center, and the organization has the challenge of systematically generating new ideas that have an impact on the center of our business. ”

Faced with this, Imtiaz specified that three factors take special importance; “We need a culture that promotes innovation; adequate infrastructure to establish correct processes that encourage experimentation, exploration and acceptance of error; and being inserted in the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem ”.

He also recommended that we remain vigilant in being able to “invest for the future, through a solid base that provides peace of mind to take controlled risks and grow at a controlled rate; invest in what we know, adding new capabilities; and keep us constantly developing, experimenting, learning from failures and adapting. ”

Nisum has invested heavily in the Chilean market, and this is reflected in two specific cases mentioned by Sajid Mohamedy, our Business EVP, who first assured that globally “we invest from a hybrid approach of the corporate venture, internally and externally, through of product and platform development, and investing in startups and in the ecosystem. ”

“In Chile we are specifically doing both, we create the Blockchain Lab, which is our main laboratory for the world, investing very strategically in the market in advanced technologies such as Blockchain. Also, one of the examples of startups in which we have invested is NoiseGrasp, a marketing analysis platform, founded in Chile, which had the collaboration of the Mathematical Modeling Center of the University of Chile, and in which we have been working to be able to expand it to the United States ”.

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